We all took the weekend off, closed up shop, and headed up to Angel Fire to participate in the Chile Challenge race.It was sweet. We all love out little bike shop, but it certainly is nice to get away once in a while. Got back yesterday feeling rejuvenated and sassy.Danny and I raced the Cross Country, and we had several other friends out there representing Bikeworks in the Mountain Cross, Downhill, and Super D events. It was a good time all around.

In fact, we had so much fun not working, we're going to close up shop this weekend and do it again! This weekend is the Pajarito Punishment race, at the Pajarito Ski area outside of Los Alamos.Check it out:http://nmmtb.org/#

The Cross Country race is on Saturday, which Danny and I will participate in, and the Downhill race is on Sunday. We are a major sponsor of the DH race. Tony has been busy getting all kinds of sweet prizes to give away, and we will be raffling off a frame from Transition to one lucky racer.

So, we encourage you to come up and play with us. It's a beautiful mountain, even if you aren't inclined to race, and is a great place to spend the day outside.

In other news, Charlie once again has a new toy:

Perhaps his best looking bike yet. This is a Maverick / Spot collaboration. One of only three Maverick hardtails around. Originally this bike was a one of a kind project for Interbikehttp://bikemag.com/gallery/interbike_08_9er/

But Charlie and one other lucky Maverick fanatic bike shop owner convinced the guys at Maverick to make them one. And the original ended up in the hands of Dale, of Dales Pale Ale.

Who's bike is this? Oh, it says so on the headtube:

It says "Charlie" on the right, and "LE 29er #3" on the left.

The frame is made to work with the belt drive, but Charlie isn't going to use the belt for now. Why you ask? Because as he puts it, he "has a Chubby for Chub hubs."

We will be lacing these hubs up to some Edge Composite carbon mountain rims for ol' Chucky, and it will be ridiculous. Unfortunately for now, the Chubs are only available in freewheel configurations, which means no belt drive, but we have been told cassette hubs will be available later this year, in both geared and SS versions.

In other bike porn, we have recieved our first Carbide SL frame from Tomac:

With 90mm of rear wheel travel, this carbon fiber wonder weighs just over 4.5lbs on our scale in a size large, with the rear shock. It's a beautiful frame, and just plain satisfying to hold in your hands. This bike has been getting some serious attention from the press lately:

Speaking of Tomac, there were a few pros out in Angel Fire this weekend showing off what the Type X is good for; going crazy fast. Taking 1st and 2nd place in the mens Pro XC, and 3rd and 4th in the Short Track XC, the Type X frame is quickly showing itself to be an extremely capable race machine.

Yesterday was the Santa Fe Century, which I attended for the first time.Word on the street was that a group of racer types were heading out at 7am, and being friends with many of those guys, our plan was to head out with them.So Danny picked me up at 5:30, then we picked up our buddy Frey, and off to Fanta Se.After several cups of pre-race in-car coffee, I had some serious "business" to take care of by the time we got to the Start / Finish area. We arrived with about half an hour before our planned start time. With a long row of Port-a-pottys within site, my plan was to get dressed, fill waterbottles etc, then hit the port-a-potty right before we left. So I'm all dressed and ready, roll up behind the toilets, lean my bike against the last one in the row, and walk around to the front right as a door is opening. I grab the door to walk in only to hear a chorus of hollering behind me. "HEY BUDDY, THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS!" I look behind me to find a line, probably 40 yards long, of anxious cyclists giving me the stink eye.There was several port-a-pottys on hand, but the line was significant, and some quick calculations told me that waiting in line was not an option. So I rolled off, away from the starting group of my buddies, right as somebody yelled "one minute 'til".I eventually found the accommodations I was looking for, and as I expected, nobody was in sight by the time I was back on my bike. So off I went, through Santa Fe, pedaling as hard as I could from the start in desperate hopes of making up a gap of who knows how many minutes on the group of fast guys that I had little hopes of hanging with in the first place.Banging through Santa Fe was fun, as I met up with our friends the Mazzolla's, who were hauling ass on their tandem. So I drafted off them for a while, until some madman on a Cervelo P4 came flying by, and then I hopped onto his wheel. He pulled me along for the majority of the way to Madrid, until I couldn't take the pace anymore and finally popped. I can't imagine doing 100miles on a TT bike, but for some reason I don't think this guy was much phased by the idea.So I'm plodding along, with the occasional fast guy or tandem to draft off, but mostly just riding on my own. After a while there weren't that many people around, I had kind of put myself into no-mans land with my start time and the pace I was riding. Then in all my awesome special-ness, I missed the turn to heartbreak hill. My excuse is there were two guys in front of me who I was following, and it turns out they weren't doing the century course. But honestly, it's pretty special to miss a turn on a ride when there are a few thousand other people riding with you that day. I must have had my head down or something, but for whatever reason I blew right past that left hand turn.

I continue to hammer along in my own little world, kind of wondering how I managed to find such a large gap between other riders. But I convince myself that it was just weird timing on my part, until I roll into Cedar Crest. Having only ridden that area of North 14 once before, I wasn't quite sure where the turn to heartbreak hill was, but I knew it was north of Cedar Crest. So I roll into the gas station at the base of the crest road, fill up my water bottles, and then ask some fellow cyclists how far north the turn to heartbreak hill might be, you know, to get a measurement of my stupidity. I'm told it's about 12 miles away.So I'm standing at the gas station, debating if I should just give up and ride home to Albuquerque, or turn around, trek the 12 miles back, and get back on course and try to finish the century, only now it would be a century and a quarter.Eventually I decide to turn around and try and finish. Mostly because I didn't really want to deal with my friend teasing me about doing the Santa Fe century and ending up in the wrong city at the end of the day. I figured if I turned around, maybe I could just not tell anybody that I missed the turn.So eventually I find my way back on course. Coming back it seems pretty ridiculous to have missed the turn, except that I'm pretty sure no signs were posted, as there had been every turn before that. Basically from there my experience was much like the couple thousand other people that did the ride that day. It's a great course. It's really fun to be on the road with that many other cyclists. I met a few new people, ran into a few customers and friends, and hopefully hundreds of other riders noticed me riding along in my pretty new Bikeworks jersey (and wind vest and matching arm warmers at the beginning of the day when it was cold).I finally finished the ride a little bit after 2pm. Danny finished a little bit after noon. I eventually learned that had I not missed the turn, I would have caught Danny and co at the rest stop at the bottom of heartbreak hill, as they waited there to regroup and I was only minutes behind at that point. Nothing like adding insult to injury.In the end, everything worked out though. I'm glad I went ahead and finished the ride. Pretty sure that is the biggest day I've ever had on a road bike. And even though I could have claimed a mechanical for my serious delay, and avoided the embarrassment of being the guy who missed the turn, I couldn't help but share my stupidity with others. I guess I'm just special.

My understanding is that there will be different local shops out there every week. We will be out there tomorrow, planning on bringing our grill and beer. There seems to be some effort this year to create a more festive atmosphere at the races, which I am excited about. We will be out again on June 9th, and I believe at least one other time than that. Danny and I are planning on racing as many as possible, including tomorrow night. I encourage everybody to try and make it out.

Then this Sunday, as many people already know, is the Santa Fe Century. Definitely a classic and very well attended event. Looks like Danny and I will be out there, and hope to see some friendly faces.

We've got a couple of cool events coming up.Memorial Day weekend, running from Friday May 22 thru Monday May 25, the Chile Challenge is taking place in Angel Fire. Always a fun event, the Chile Challenge is the only race in the Mountain States Cup Series that takes place in New Mexico. Check out the website:

This year the race is a UCI points race for Downhill and 4X, which basically means there will be some badasses showing up, and there will be some good spectating to be had. The list of sponsors is awesome as well. With Oskar Blues showing up giving away copious amounts of Dales Pale Ale, the best beer ever to come out of a can, Maverick sponsoring the Super D race, and our friends at Tomac showing up, there will be plenty of sweet bikes to oggle and cool people to chillax with.The Downhill course is a former World Cup course, the XC is notoriously brutal, 4X is always entertaining, and the Super D is supposedely more "D" than "super." With a little short track XC racing thrown in, it is bound to be a great weekend.

As we have a habit of doing from time to time, we are going to close up shop so that we can go enjoy the festivities in Angel Fire. We are going to be closed that Saturday (May 23rd) and Monday (May 25th). So if you don't think you can get through the weekend without seeing us, you'll just have to go up to Angel Fire with us.

Then, the following weekend is the Pajarito Punishment, at the Pajarito Ski Area in Los Alamos. This year, there will be the XC race on Saturday, followed by a Downhill race on Sunday. Check out the sites:

Rumor has it that Bikeworks and Transition are going to be raffling off a frame for all DH racers that enter. Another rumor has it that there will be schwag from Troy Lee, 661, Magura, Commencal, Tomac, and Bikeworks given away at the DH race as well as beer from Marble Brewery. And further rumors will have you believe that the course is going to be rad, as it is being designed with the help of local pro Chris Boice, and local Bikeworks racer Vince Sanchez. Everbody who knows Chris and Vince knows that they can put together a good trail.

There will be a trail building day this saturday, 5/9, meeting at 10am in the lodge to help get the trail set in.

And that pretty much covers what we're excited about right now at Bikeworks.